ith a precarious cease fire agreement in effect, Israeli and Palestinian officials appear to be taking steps to calm tensions that have resulted in over 100 deaths and thousands of injuries. No one is sure that this latest agreement, hammered out as part of a U.S.-brokered deal in a two-day emergency summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt will hold. Even if it does, there is little guarantee that Palestinian and Israeli negotiators will head back to the conference table any time soon.

   Both Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat have pledged to abide by the latest agreement. Israel is watching closely to see if Arafat can rein in militant Islamic fundamentalists like the Hezbollah "Holy Warriors" group which kidnapped three Israeli soldiers on October 7 along the Lebanese border, and on Sunday seized an Israeli air force colonel. Another militant Islamic formation, the Hamas, has already denounced the cease-fire accord reached at Sharm el-Sheikh.

   The Palestinians are waiting to see if the Israeli Defense Forces withdraw from key sectors, and keep border checkpoints open between Jordan and the West Bank.

   None of this, though, is a major step in resolving a geopolitical conflict that has deep roots in the religious and cultural history of the area. The violence in Gaza and the surrounding regions is about land, cultural identity, religion and sacred symbols. It is also about a small piece of real estate considered holy to three of the world's major religious faiths -- Judaism, Islam and Christianity. After all, the latest round of violence erupted late last month when Israeli hard-liner Ariel Sharon, head of the Likud Party, visited a site in the city of Jerusalem known to Jews as the Temple Mount, and to Arabs as Haram as-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary. This small sliver of land is ground zero in a political and religious conflict over two millennia old.

   The Temple Mount is sacred to Jews as the site of the first two Temples of the Old Testament. Known also as Mount Moriah, or the holy mountain, the faithful believe is it also where Abraham nearly sacrificed his son, Isaac, and where Solomon constructed his Temple. Jesus supposedly preached here. The Hebrew Midrash refers to the site as "the navel of the world ... situated in the center of the world" where the Ark of the Covenant resided.

   The First Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E. (Before the Common Era, also designated "B.C." or "Before Christ") The Romans sacked the Second Temple in 70 C.E. The history of both events was incorporated into subsequent apocalyptic literature. In 635 C.E. Muslim armies swept through the region and took control of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. To Islam, the site was also significant; a shrine known as the Dome of the Rock, constructed between 684 and 691 C.E. protected the "holy rock" where Mohammed is said to have flown off to heaven. Invading papal armies during the Crusades conquered the region, and for about a century the Dome of the Rock and the adjacent al-Aqsa mosque were turned into churches. Muslim control was soon reestablished, and for Islam, the area known as Haram as-Sharif resonated as the third most holy site after Medina and Mecca.

   The Holy Land, including Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, became a source of everything from Biblical-era legends to questionable artifacts which found their way throughout Cheistendom. The rise of Zionism in the late nineteenth century and the cry that Jews return from their exile or Diaspora around the world placed a renewed emphasis on Jerusalem. The modern Jewish State was established in 1949, and in the 1967 war, Israel regained control of the ancient city and the Mount.

   For a segment of contemporary Christians, mostly evangelicals and fundamentalists, the events of the last half-century in the middle east are of profound religious significance. The establishment of Israel as a nation state, and the military conquest of Jerusalem describe what many consider to be the fulfillment of prophecy, leading up to the construction of a Third Temple, the Second Coming of Jesus Christ and other eschatological events including a Rapture where the chosen faithful -- dead and living -- rise into the air to meet the Messiah. This comes around a time known as the Tribulation, when the Antichrist unleashes his persecution of the one, true church.

   Details of this exotic Biblical scenario remain a lively source of controversy within this community of apocalyptic Christians. Historians note that all of the ingredients in this cosmic drama have been predicted before, especially when a prominent religious, military or political figure was conveniently identified as the Antichrist. Norman Cohn's seminal work "The Pursuit of the Millennium" compiles an extensive chronicle of cults and popular movements where the faithful believed that the events and circumstances of their own period confirmed Biblical prophecy. In every age, including our own, there are those pouring through the texts of the Old and New Testaments and other literature, seeing "signs and wonders" that the end of history is finally at hand.

   Many of those who study the events in the middle east, and specifically the conflict surrounding the Temple Mount, point to passages like Daniel 9:27 and Leviticus 25:8-55 as proof of prophetic vision. By these accounts, three events must take place before the Rapture of the faithful and the Second Coming. They are: the reconstitution of Israel and the return of the Jews to their original homeland; Jewish hegemony over Jerusalem; and the construction of a Third Temple. While many religious scholars and historians see all of this in symbolic or historic terms, a growing number of evangelical Christians accept these dramatic phrophetic events as literal truth.

   "When will the Temple be rebuilt?" ask authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, whose popular "Left Behind" series has sold over 20 million copies and percolated from religious bookstores into mainline commercial outlets. LaHaye was a founder of Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority movement, and Jenkins boasts a career as a writer with the Moody Bible Institute and a film producer. Their series, a doomsday drama with heavy religious fundamentalist overtones, has sparked a renewed interest in Biblical prophecy and things apocalyptic. The pair predict that the building of a Third Temple is immanent.

   "Anyone interested in end-time events has his eyes on the temple project," say LaHaye and Jenkins in their 1999 bestseller, "Are We Living In The End Times?" They confirm what even secular media has discovered; that around the world, and within shooting distance of the Temple Mount, "various groups have been working clandestinely to prepare all the materials" needed to storm Mount Moriah and begin construction of a new temple.

   The "Temple Project" has been featured in religious magazines and radio-television programs such as Pat Robertson's "700 Club." Ironically, one of those attracting the support of eschatologically charged Christians is a Jew, Gershon Salomon who has made several attempts to lay cornerstones for the Third Temple on the Temple Mount, but is inevitably stopped by the Israeli security forces. One major problem for Salomon and his Temple Mount and Land of Israel Faithful movement is that in constructing a new Temple, they propose tearing down the Dome of the Rock shrine and the al-Aqsa Mosque. Such a step, or a terrorist or military attack on the Mount, would surely trigger an uprising from Palestinians and Arab supporters.

   Earlier this week, as tensions throughout the area escalated, Salomon and a small handful of Jewish and Christian supporters again attempted to lay a cornerstone for the Third Temple.

   "The Arabs will never move us from the Temple Mount, Jerusalem, or the land of Israel," Salomon told a gathering. Chants of "Liberate the Temple Mount! Death to Arafat!" echoed across the Western Wall plaza.

   "There will be no peace until the city (Jerusalem) is under the control of the people God promised it to," declared Jan Willem van der Hoeven, director of a Christian Zionist group. "The prophecies say Jerusalem will become a stone too heavy to life, and it has happened -- even to Mr. Clinton," he added.

   Salomon's demonstration was quickly branded "a very grave provocation" by Arab-American groups and Palestinians, but drew surprisingly wide coverage in U.S. evangelical and religious conservative circles. "Wars and Rumors of Wars; A Cornerstone for 3rd Temple," headlined the worldnetdaily.com internet site, which also runs ads for the LaHaye-Jenkins "Left Behind" books. A staff writer quoted Salomon as declaring that the creation of the modern Israel "is the beginning of the redemption of the world," which must be completed with the construction of a Third Temple.

   ¶    How important is the Mount to Palestinians? Even secular Palestinians and Israelis see the Temple Mount as a flash point in a war, if not over religion, then over real estate and political control. Hamas, Hezbollah and other Islamic militants regularly demand that Jerusalem revert to control by a theocratic Muslim state. The official news broadcasts from the Palestinian Authority use an embellished backdrop of the al-Aqsa Mosque as an evocative symbol of resistance.

   ¶    The Temple Mount is also part of a larger question, namely, the debate over which city -- secular, modernist Tel Aviv or the religious city of Jerusalem -- is truly the capital of Israel. U.S. policy makers fret over whether the American Embassy should be located in Jerusalem -- a diplomatic signal, say some, which telegraphs support for hard line Israeli policy. Palestinians want the eastern half of Jerusalem to be the capital of a future state, whereas Israeli policy treats the city as indivisible. At the United Nations, there have been various proposals, including one from the Vatican which would treat Jerusalem as an "international city."

   ¶    The religious volatility of the region was clearly demonstrated when Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount on September 28. Jittery U.S. policy makers promptly branded the development as a provocation; and the following day, stone-throwing Palestinians clashed with the Israeli security forces outside the Temple Mount. The violence quickly spilled over into the West Bank and Gaza Strip, hotbeds of Islamic fundamentalism.

   Both Prime Minister Barak and Palestinian Authority President Arafat find themselves in the middle of a contentious situation, and possibly outflanked on both sides by religious militants. Arafat is once again in competition with Hamas, Hezbollah and other Islamic groups seeking a confrontational solution which includes Muslim control over the Temple Mount, Jerusalem, and much of the region. Barak has to finesse some kind of agreement that meets Palestinian demands for autonomy, yet keeps Jerusalem under Israeli control, all the time holding in check Likud and other religious parties like the Shas. Can this be done?

   Any workable agreement would have to deal with the incendiary issue of the Temple Mount. Some Christian evangelicals, as well as select Jewish extremists, seem to ignore or even anticipate the prospect of violent confrontation, though, seeing it as a necessary step in building the Third Temple. Islamists would certainly not welcome the destruction of their Dome of the Rock shrine and the al-Aqsa Mosque in order to fulfill this prophetic belief. Any workable solution will have to emphasize secular values -- freedom, tolerance, and a a renunciation of violence. If there is an answer to the vexing issues surrounding the Temple Mount, it likely involves less, not more, religious belief.

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